A month ago to the day, SpaceX informed us all that it was aiming to launch its Dragon spacecraft skyward on April 30th, and rendezvous with the ISS a few days later. Now NASA's finally finished its flight readiness review and has given Elon Musk's capsule the green light to hit that launch window.

Holy shit, I didn't realize that we were this close to private space travel HAPPENING. I've run out of words for how awesome this is. The date is set for April 30th. Mark your calendars, folks, if this works out, it'll be the most important development in space travel in recent history.

I don't see any way they could possibly get profit from it, not with today's tech.

If space travel is made more affordable and reliable, then business will inevitably move to exploit it. In the long run, space has the potential to be (and likely will become) an incredibly lucrative source of business, if not the most.

I don't see any way they could possibly get profit from it, not with today's tech.

Satellites are becoming more common and companies need a way to get up there. SpaceX has developed a craft that can do it on the cheap. That's how. Elon also says he can get you to mars on $500,000 dollars which is ridiculously cheap.

Satellites are becoming more common and companies need a way to get up there. SpaceX has developed a craft that can do it on the cheap. That's how. Elon also says he can get you to mars on $500,000 dollars which is ridiculously cheap.

Satellites are becoming more common and companies need a way to get up there. SpaceX has developed a craft that can do it on the cheap. That's how. Elon also says he can get you to mars on $500,000 dollars which is ridiculously cheap.

Yeah but it's ridiculously expensive if you consider that probably 90% of the world's population won't make that much in a life time.

It's all relative, and saying it's "ridiculously cheap" compared to something that almost no one can afford is kinda silly.

The average person can't afford a lot of things. The point is that if a government or business wants something there, we can get there extremely cheap. There's no practical reason to send civilians to mars just yet anyway.

What makes me really skeptical about any of these guys really pushing the envelope in terms of the frontier that is space flight is something that Neil Degrasse Tyson brings up. That never, in the history of the human species, has private enterprise EVER spearheaded ventures into territories with high, unknown risks at such high cost. Investors simply can never justify it. Whereas, any time such things HAVE been accomplished, it was through government funding, one-hundred per cent.

The private sector, I've no doubt, may well do plenty of work into privatizing low-Earth orbit, which we've become comfortable with and in which investors would be more comfortable knowing most of the risks and costs.

But if you want a Moon base, or a Mars expedition, we need to get NASA back on its feet. It's gotta happen, or we're not going anywhere. NASA's current budget is 1/16th of 1 cent on the tax dollar. I think we can all stand to give them a touch more than that.